664. Working Session: Build Your Next Two Weeks of Content in 1 Hour - Julia Campbell

Summary

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Podcast Summary: We Are For Good - Episode 664

Title: Working Session: Build Your Next Two Weeks of Content in 1 Hour
Guest: Julia Campbell (Social Media and Digital Marketing Expert)
Release Date: December 10, 2025
Host(s): Jon McCoy + Becky Endicott

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Episode Overview

This tactical "working session" episode dives into efficient content planning for nonprofits, featuring digital marketing strategist Julia Campbell. With practical, step-by-step advice, Julia demonstrates how organizations can build a robust, goal-oriented content calendar covering multiple platforms—streamlining the content creation process to take just an hour for two weeks of planning. The conversation centers on aligning content with organizational objectives, the necessity of clarity over quantity, and the importance of authenticity in storytelling.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Possibility (and Power) of Streamlined Content Planning

[01:43] Julia Campbell:

• Affirms that building a content calendar for one or two weeks is realistic in just one hour.
• Urges nonprofits to focus on clarity of message rather than trying to cover everything, which can confuse donors.
• “When we strip it down and focus on clarity of message instead of quantity of content, then it becomes so much easier to create.” [01:43]

2. Goal-Oriented, Audience-Centric Content

[02:50] Julia Campbell:

• The purpose of communication and the intended audience should drive all content decisions.
• Different platforms serve different purposes and play to different strengths; for instance, email is best for direct fundraising while TikTok might serve engagement goals for younger audiences.

3. The Four Content Buckets Framework

[04:29]/[06:39] Julia Campbell:

• Julia recommends structuring weekly or monthly content around four "buckets" that serve as the North Star for planning:
  1. Impact – Stories of your work, statistics, anecdotes of transformation.
  2. Engagement – Prompts, polls, questions, fostering two-way communication.
  3. Authority – Offering unique perspectives, thought leadership, and subject-matter expertise relevant to your sector.
  4. Human-Centered – Behind-the-scenes content showcasing the people powering the organization (staff, volunteers, etc.).
• “If you don’t really know where to start, then those are kind of four ideas for you.” [07:16]

4. The Competitive Advantage of Authentic Storytelling

[07:59] Julia Campbell:

• In an era of AI-generated content, authentic stories are a nonprofit’s "last best competitive advantage."
• Even small anecdotes or “breadcrumbs” about day-to-day mission work can drive deeper donor understanding and trust.
• “Stories are nonprofits’ last best competitive advantage in a world of AI sludge. … When donors do not understand who you are and what you stand for, they're not going to give.” [07:59]

5. Less Is More: Platform Pruning and Focus

[09:50] Julia Campbell:

• Advocates for fewer communication channels to avoid being spread too thin.
• “If you cannot create this content calendar in an hour, then you're probably on too many different channels.” [09:50]
• Select platforms based on alignment with organizational goals, audience presence, and available capacity.
• Regularly reevaluate each channel for effectiveness.

6. Personalizing Content Planning: Repurposing & Cadence

[14:06] Julia Campbell:

• Consistency is more important than volume; it's fine to only post a couple times weekly if that’s sustainable.
• Start by auditing existing content (newsletters, reports, event recaps) to see what can be refreshed and shared anew.
• Use a simple spreadsheet to plan posts by platform and weekday.
• Cross-posting with slight adjustments for context is encouraged: “What nonprofits tend to think is, okay, we posted it on Facebook, we shared it in our email newsletter… you're not inundating your donors. Most people will still not have seen it.” [16:18]

7. Tracking What Matters: KPIs to Guide Improvement

[18:56] Julia Campbell:

• Only track metrics you plan to use for improvement; don’t just gather data for the sake of it.
• Focus on engagement, conversions, and alignment with strategic goals—not just vanity metrics like follower count.
• “If you’re tracking data points and you have no intention of doing anything with them, you are not going to be improving… So, if you’re using the point of engagement, if that’s something you really want to build, or if you’re looking at video views, those are the KPIs that you track.” [18:56]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [01:43] Julia Campbell:
  “When we strip down this content calendar and focus on clarity of message instead of quantity… it becomes so much easier to create.”

• [07:59] Julia Campbell:
  “Stories are nonprofits’ last best competitive advantage in a world of AI sludge… It’s really the way we’re going to stand out and also rebuild trust.”

• [09:50] Julia Campbell:
  “If you cannot create this content calendar in an hour, then you’re probably on too many different channels.”

• [16:18] Julia Campbell:
  “Most people will still not have seen it. But, if it’s really a great thing to see, I don’t mind seeing it twice… just figure out how you’re going to mold it into each of those places and be very intentional with that.”

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Practical Steps for Content Calendar Building (Julia’s Method)

[14:06] Julia Campbell:

• Identify your buckets: Impact / Engagement / Authority / Human-centered content.
• Audit existing assets: Pull from what's already been created (emails, reports, past posts, etc.)
• Choose your cadence: Pick a posting frequency you can sustain—consistency matters most!
• Use a calendar tool: Simple spreadsheet with platforms on one axis, days of week on another.
• Adapt and crosspost: Repurpose content across channels—don’t be afraid of repeating.
• Track what moves the needle: Focus on metrics that align with your communication goals.

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Julia's One Good Thing: 30-Second Video Challenge

[22:00] Julia Campbell:

• Take a 30-second video—no matter how imperfect—and post it to show the human side of your work.
• “People want to see the human element. They want to see you. … When you do that and you post that video, you’re going to see such increased engagement and comments, and people are going to love it.”

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Actionable Takeaways

• Use the four buckets framework for content planning to simplify and focus weekly or biweekly calendar building.
• Focus on fewer platforms with maximum impact instead of scattering limited resources.
• Repurpose content boldly—donors’ attention is fragmented, and repetition builds clarity.
• Only track metrics that inform strategic decisions; don’t get lost in reporting for its own sake.
• Embrace authentic, unscripted video to boost engagement and deepen human connection.

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Connect with Julia Campbell

• LinkedIn: Julia Campbell
• Website: jcsocialmarketing.com
• Podcast: Nonprofit Nation

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This session was filled with down-to-earth, confidence-boosting wisdom—ideal for every nonprofit professional looking to spend less time planning, and more time creating meaningful impact.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, friends, what if we could get off the content creation treadmill and sit down and in just one hour have two weeks worth of content planned out for our organizations? Wouldn't that be awesome? Today's working session, we're talking to Julia Campbell. She is a social media expert. She is a digital marketer by trade. She knows this work. She is going to walk us step by step how to build a content calendar that works for us and it drives our greatest goals. I'm so glad you're here.

Welcome to working sessions on the We Are for Good podc. In every session, we're tackling one essential topic and give you practical steps to take meaningful action within your mission. Today, we're bringing you the experts and playbooks to help you move forward with clarity and confidence. Let's get to work.

Julia, I always love getting to see you. Thanks so much for being here today.

[B]

I'm so excited to be here and just thanks for inviting me.

[A]

Well, of course. I mean, when we think about a storyteller, we think about somebody that knows how to take content and connect it with people. It's like an audience of one. With our episode one guest, Julia, you're our first guest.

[B]

I love telling people that. Do you know that I always tell people that, and they're like, really? You were the number one first guest of the campus, Truly.

[A]

And we were, like, so intimidated that you said yes because you knew what you were doing and we were just starting. So I really am grateful that we've gotten to stay friends through the journey. So, I mean, this kind of series is so tactical, and I just want to, like, jump in because you're so great at creating a content calendar in short time because you work with a lot of small nonprofits where there's not a lot of time. Like, we don't have time to do this. We need a content calendar probably like yesterday. So walk us through. Is this realistic to say, I'm going to create a content calendar in an hour and kind of set the tone for where we're going today?

[B]

Absolutely. I believe that you could do your content calendar for a week or maybe two weeks in an hour. There's certainly other things you need to be doing on social media, like research and listening and community and connecting and all of that. But in terms of content creation and looking at what you have and what you can repurpose, it certainly can be done in an hour. I think where nonprofits are getting hung up is that they feel like they have to communicate about all the things and they end up confusing their donors. So when we strip it down and we strip down this content calendar and focus on clarity of message instead of quantity of content, then it's becomes so much easier to create.

[A]

Why am I feeling exposed after being in this field for like 15 years? Because just having one call to action is hard sometimes because it's like we do want someone to donate and we want them to volunteer and we want to hear about our newsletter and our impact report. It's how do you get clarity for what you want to, like, talk about? Where do you draw that from? Is it from goals? Is it from what has it cascade for you?

[B]

Well, for me, it really depends on goals. So what is your purpose for this particular communication, this content calendar? And then who is your audience? What do they want to hear from you? What moves them and motivates them? And then what are the platforms you're using? Because there are strengths and weaknesses of each platform. So when you're creating your content calendar, you know, I'm going to walk you through sort of how to do it, but when you're creating it, something you have to think about is, you know, email is so much better for a direct fundraising ask than TikTok, right, or any other social media platform. And direct mail is still really effective for asking. So picking the platforms and molding your content or your story or your particular, you know, piece of information, molding it to the platform and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each platform is incredibly important. And that's where I do think a lot of nonprofits get it wrong, because they think, oh, we can just use every platform to post our fundraising link, and then they're not getting results and not really understanding the strengths and weaknesses and the sort of etiquette and what works on each platform.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's super sage because if you think about the different platforms, just the context alone of how we use them, like, we're just in different states of mind if we're scrolling our email than if we're flipping through TikTok at 9 o' clock at night or something different. Like, it's just we're in a different space.

[B]

So.

[A]

Okay, let's. Let's zoom back out. If we're building a content calendar, where do you start? What else are you kind of gathering to get started with this process?

[B]

Well, you want to identify your content buckets. So I would actually do this monthly. You could do it weekly. But you want to really identify sort of the four main areas, what you want to convey, what you want to communicate about this particular week if we're doing a one hour content calendar for the week. So. So potentially maybe it's giving Tuesday so you want to be leading up to your giving Tuesday ask. Or maybe it's year end or maybe you're running a Mother's day campaign, or maybe you're just sort of running a donor appreciation campaign. But the four buckets are incredibly important because they're going to become your North Star. So you're not waking up on Monday morning going on Facebook and saying what am I going to post? So my recommended for buckets for nonprofits, especially when you're using social media, are impact. So that's your stories of your work, your statistics. Those are the, you know, mission moments that anecdotes of transformation. The second bucket is really how are you eliciting engagement? So are you asking questions? Are you putting out polls? Are you really like asking evocative and provocative questions of your audience? Are you really encouraging them to participate with you in this two way street we call social media? And the third bucket is authority. This is something that I think the national level nonprofits, because they're on a national stage or international stage do really well. Someone like a no kid hungry like, you know, they are a thought leader in the food insecurity space or invisible people thought leaders in the homelessness space. But I think even a small nonprofit can really help establish authority and that should be your third bucket. So this is the questions that only you can answer and your unique perspective. What's going on in the news? What do I need to know right now? And really helping establish your thought leadership that works really well on social media. And the fourth bucket is the human centered piece of your nonprofit. The behind the scenes, the from the desk of the executive director, the people that power the nonprofit. This does not mean you have to be sharing client stories or interviewing clients, but people work at your organization. People power your organization, whether they're loading trucks or writing letters or making phone calls or driving people around. So who are the people and the volunteers and the interns and the staff? Staff and the behind the scenes. That is another thing that I think donors really love to see on social media. So I would start with what are your four buckets? But if you don't really know where to start, then those are kind of four ideas for you.

[A]

So much here that I would love to talk about. But what's not lost on me is that it's really easy nowadays to like be so reliant on something like a chat GPT to like, map things out. And what I saw here was so much like centering the humanity in this. And it's like, yeah, we could do all the things that seem more expected and talk about our missions in a certain way and the goals. I love that one of your four buckets is, let's talk about the actual humans behind the work, because that's trust building. It's just humans making it work together. And I think that's so lost. But it's literally a pillar of your work, so I'm just so here for that.

[B]

Oh, absolutely. Stories are nonprofits last best competitive advantage in a world of AI sludge or slop or whatever it's being called now. It's really the way we're going to stand out and make ourselves known and also rebuild trust that has been lost and decimated over the past few years. Not necessarily because of anything that we did, just because of the culture. But I think that stories, authentic stories, and even something that doesn't seem like a story. Think of stories as sort of the breadcrumbs leading people along the path to understand your organization better. Because when donors do not understand who you are and what you stand for, they're not going to give. They might understand what you do, but if they don't understand the why and they don't understand really the benefits that you're providing and what would be lost if you close your doors, then that's really going to confuse your donors and. And help them, you know, maybe skip to the next email. So focusing a lot of your content through that lens and then getting, like, really practical into, you know, what is our anchor. I call it like the anchor story for the week, because you have to share at least one story a week. The story could be two sentences. The story could be an anecdote. The story could be you doing a walk and talk with your phone saying, wow, this really neat thing happened in the program this week, and here's what it meant to me. So a story doesn't have to be. Julia came to our organization. Julia received services. Julia's life is better. Julia is now on her way. In fact, that's really just a recounting of things that happened that's not even really a story. A story is much more, you know, it has a hook, it has an emotional resonance.

[A]

It's.

[B]

And it's really going to help me understand your mission more. So if you have one anchor story a week that you can then mold into the different channels, and I think fewer channels is. Are always better. So take A really hard look at the number of channels that you're using to communicate every week. And if it's. If you cannot create this content calendar in an hour, then you're probably on too many different channels. Now, granted, there's different times of year when you have to create more content and you have to constantly be posting online, but if a typical week and you're not a full time social media manager and it's sort of stuck onto your job as fundraiser or executive director, then really take a look at those platforms that you're on and see where you can kind of prune them and where you might be getting the most bang for your buck. Because I think that we're trying to be on too many platforms and we're not diving deeper into the platforms that are working. We're trying to spread ourself way too thin across multiple platforms.

[A]

Yeah. Such solid advice. How do you suggest narrowing? I mean, is it where you see traction or where you think you should seize traction, or how do you decide what to double down on?

[B]

It's based on goals, audience and capacity. That's the framework that I always teach when your board member comes to you and says, we need to be on TikTok. Okay, why do we specifically need to be on TikTok? What is it going to bring to us that not any other platform can and is our target audience there? So if the answers are yes, like maybe you want to reach younger audiences, maybe you want to build your engagement, maybe you want to connect with influencers, if those are your goals, then yes, I think you absolutely should explore TikTok. But if your goals and your audience are not in alignment with the platform, then it might be time to sort of table it or look at a different platform that is aligned with your goals and audience. And the other piece is capacity, because, let's be honest, a place like TikTok or YouTube, those take a lot of effort, a lot of time. Not just watching, not just jumping on trends, not just following what's really working, but to really gain traction on those platforms takes a lot of time and intention that you might not have. Then you also want to look at. Is a platform just completely not working for you at all like Facebook? I would say Facebook pages for a lot of us have gone very flat. They're not getting a lot of engagement. But for a lot of nonprofits, Facebook still aligns with their goals and with their audience, so they're not going to get rid of Facebook. So just looking at statistics and trends is not going to help you, you have to look internally and see is this going to help us accomplish our goals? Is our audience there and still engaging with us? Do we have the capacity to manage this? And I would do, I would ask those three questions very constantly for everywhere that you are online.

[A]

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Okay Julia, I'm thinking very like practical. If we've got like a week of content that we're trying to plan. Yeah, you've got the four buckets. You've also got this story that you've kind of teased that we want to have. How do you kind of like map it out of how to share on the channels?

[B]

Well, this is where, this is where it gets very personalized for how often you're posting. So some organizations are posting every day, some organizations are posting three times a week. So I always advocate for consistency over quantity. If you're only posting twice a week on your platforms, I think that's completely fine. But the key is to just maintain that. So you need to pick a cadence that's going to work for you. But looking at your buckets, seeing what kind of content do you already have, what can you, if you're doing the impact bucket, what kind of statistics or information or stories do you already have? Do you have them on your website? Did you just write an amazing email appeal letter that you spent so much time on or a direct mail appeal or an event in a gala, you know, something for your gala, a program. Look at the content that you already have. We tend to reinvent the wheel and think we need something brand new every single week. But look at what you already have. And even if it's something you've used like six months ago, even three months ago, you can put a fresh coat of paint on it, you can put a new Instagram caption on it, you can put a new Facebook caption on it. So Being a detective and looking at what you already have and then kind of fitting it into those holes in your calendar. So mapping out your calendar, I use a Google spreadsheet where I just simply put a platform on the left hand side. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, email, blog post, whatever it is you have for the week. And then the other columns are, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And then I try to look at what is the main piece of content I'm going to be sharing that day. Maybe it's your annual report. And then how can you repurpose that across all of those different platforms? Because what nonprofits tend to think is, okay, we posted it on Facebook, we shared it in our email newsletter, we put it on our website, we're inundating our donors. You're not right at all.

[A]

Most have still not seen it. Let's be clear.

[B]

Yeah, most people will still not have seen it. But the other thing is, if it's really a great thing to see, I don't mind seeing it twice. I don't mind seeing your executive director talking about it on Instagram and, and then seeing, you know, a Facebook post about it, an infographic on Pinterest. The key is just to figure out how you're going to mold it into each of those places and be very intentional with that. And if you're only posting two, three times a week, that's fine. But just making sure that you have that planned out on the Monday. What are your most important things you need to cover this week? Which platforms are we using this week? And then how are we going to mold the content into a format that works on each platform?

[A]

You're breaking this down to make it as simple as possible. It's something we call syndication. What do we already have that's on the shelf? That's done, that's approved, that's been vetted, that you could just start recycling in different places. Such a good hack. Love that you lifted that.

[B]

Yeah. I really believe that clarity is so much more important than capacity. Being very clear about your message and what you stand for and repeating it over and over and over and over to your donors, that's going to help them, you know, solidify it in their mind. It's going to help them really understand that they're in the right place, that they're with a like minded community of people who want to work on a problem and a solution that they believe in and that you are the best avenue to do that. So sharing thought leadership, commenting on what's going on this week what do I. What are the three things I need to know this week to fight food insecurity in my community? Those are the kinds of things your donors want to know and then they turn to you for that information. So being, you know, not everything has to be a story. Like stories are definitely the most compelling kind of content in terms of fundraising. But establishing and building that trust with the, your donors, with your constituents really involves the, you know, having a wide array of buckets. So having three to four content buckets that you pull from and not relying on one constantly.

[A]

Yeah, no, I think that's so wise because you're trying to connect with different type of people and so different things are going to resonate. Just like a quick question because, you know, we planned the content side. What should we be thinking about tracking to know that this is working, that this matters? I feel like we all need those like signals to feel like we're not just talking into the vortex. What do you look at for engaging content?

[B]

The KPIs, the key performance indicators. Is anything that you track that you're going to use the data afterwards. So if you're tracking data points and you have no intention of doing anything with them, you are not going to be improving, you're not going to look at them, you're not going to be actually sifting and pruning things, you're not going to be looking at your content. Then don't measure it. So many people have these spreadsheets. When I do my social media audits, my clients have these 50 point spreadsheets and I'm thinking, are you doing anything with this? No, we just run this report and we report out to our executive director and I don't know, I don't know even know what they do with it. So if you're using the point of like engagement, if that's something you really want to build, or if you're looking at video views, if you're looking at website traffic from social media, if you're looking at conversions, how many people actually donated from your email appeal? Those are the KPIs that you track. I really think that, you know, we talk a lot about vanity metrics. There's a lot of talk about vanity metrics, like the number of likes, the number of followers you have. I think that it's important to keep an eye on that. You don't want all of a sudden your follower count to drop dramatically. But I wouldn't focus on that. I would really focus on is, are these actions getting you where you need to go. And that could be just increased engagement with corporate donors. That could be volunteer recruitment, that could be advocacy, it could be website traffic, whatever it is. But that all goes back to the goal, the purpose of why you're communicating. And for us, it's very hard with marketing because a lot of what we do in marketing is incredibly hard to track. Until one day we get a $5,000 gift from a donor and they say, oh, I've been following you on Instagram for a year. Which I did have happen to a client of mine.

[A]

Oh, I love that. That's.

[B]

And, but that's. So that's. We can't usually, we don't usually have those stories. Hopefully you'll have a story or two like that. But just know that I really firmly believe that marketing, your mission, is part of your mission. It's part of what you are meant to do. You're meant to advocate for your clients. You're meant to advocate and educate people around the problem, and you're meant to build resources around your solution. And if people don't know what you do, that's going to be very difficult. So I wouldn't get hung up on. Did this Facebook post raise $5,000?

[A]

Right.

[B]

As much as did this? You know, did we build an audience and a community?

[A]

Yeah, that's the stuff that matters. I mean, love that you kind of brought us back to the grounding principles that we started this of. Like, what are we actually trying to do here? Because there's so much to get distracted by in this space. So as we start to like wind down the working session, I'd ask for a one good thing to get some momentum going. What is something that you'd say we could take action on today?

[B]

I would. If you do one thing today, I know that's a lot of people are not gonna be very comfortable posting a video, but I am when I tell you that every time I take my phone, I don't care how I look, I don't care what I'm doing. I walked up a hill one day and I did a 30 second video for giving Tuesday. And I was huffing and puffing and I could barely breathe. That video was so popular. People want to see the human element. They want to see you. So take a video, a 30 second video with your phone. This is what's going on today. This is the view from my desk. You know, say happy Thanksgiving, Happy Holidays, whatever it is that you want to say. I really think if we, when you do that and you post that video, you're going to see such increased engagement and comments, and people are going to love it. It's going to give you the confidence to do more video, to be more human, to be more vulnerable, because authenticity is just. It's going to always work so much better than polish every time.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, my gosh, friends, I feel the trepidation when we have to pick it up.

[B]

I know. Trust me. It took me a long time to make that video. I did, like multiple takes, but I got it. And I'm telling you, I got such great feedback on it that I was much more confident to make more.

[A]

Yep. And if you need to hear this from two podcasters here today, I don't know how many episodes at this point you've done. We're still scared and we still don't probably like the sound of our voice. But it's okay. We can get in the arena. We can share and people connect with people. So I'm with you. What a great one. Good thing, friend. I always love hanging out with you. How can people find you and connect to your work and all the things that you're doing online? Point us to how people do.

[B]

Sure. I'm on LinkedIn. That's probably my preferred channel. So just look up Julia Campbell and my website, jcsocialmarketing.com lots of free resources and my blog is there, too. Oh, and my podcast, Nonprofit Nation. John, I have to have you and Becky back on, so come on, let's go. We'll have to schedule that for the new year, but yeah, check out Nonprofit Nation wherever you're listening to this.

[A]

Yes. So grateful to have this time together. Good to see you, my friend. Thank you.